The past two decades have witnessed substantial growth and development of further education in Ireland at unprecedented rates since the economic downturn following the Celtic Tiger (1994–2007), which included substantial changes from the government to the grassroots level in how further education is funded, administered, and experienced on the ground level by students and teachers alike. The sector has seen a massive revitalization in the last 24 months, with the establishment of the new Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation, and Science (DFHERIS) in 2020 and the release of the National Further Education and Training (FET) strategy (Government of Ireland, 2020).While the strategy acknowledges the sector as being "at the heart of communities" across Ireland and recognises the "critical" (Government of Ireland, 2020, p. 4) role it will play in supporting and developing the Irish economy in post-Covid times, the fact remains that there is a clear dearth of high-quality research in the FE sector in Ireland. Indeed, McGuinness and colleagues (2014, p. 6) have acknowledged that there currently exists a "lack of appropriate data or a developed academic literature on Irish FET." This is particularly true in relation to research with teachers and practitioners in the field. This lack of research forms the rationale for the present study, which is a joint project between the Marino Institute and the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG).

The overarching research question is:

How do student-teachers in the further education sector conceptualise and develop their professional teaching identity?

This project's objective is to gain a more in-depth comprehension of the motivations, experiences, and points of view of ITE entrants and student teachers who are preparing for careers in the further education industry. In particular, the project will investigate the factors that influenced these individuals' choice to work in the field of higher education teaching and will look into the reasons why these people decided to pursue teaching as a profession in the first place. In addition, the nature and quality of the interactions that student-teachers have with students and staff during their teaching placements or in their respective FE centers will be investigated as part of this project. In the context of the Further Education sector, this examination will allow the project to investigate how these individuals conceptualize their professional identity as "teachers." In addition to this, the project will investigate the factors that play a role in the formation of their teaching identity as well as their future plans for continuing education and professional development.

We propose a case-study methodology situated at the Marino Institute of Education (MIE) and the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG). All students enrolled at the respective higher education institutions will be invited to participate in this study. Participants will be asked to complete 1 semi-structured interview of approximately 45 to 60 minutes in length and 1 short demographic online questionnaire, which should take no more than 5 minutes to complete.

The semi-structured interview will explore topical areas such as: motivations for pursuing a teaching career in the Further Education sector, experiences on educational placements, conceptualisation of what it means to be a teacher in the Further Education sector, the factors that shape their "teaching" identity, and plans for future professional development. All interviews will be conducted and recorded using Zoom to ensure accurate transcription and data collection for both participants and researchers.

In conducting this research, each participant will also be asked to complete a short demographic questionnaire, administered through Microsoft Forms. This questionnaire will gather data on their background, such as gender, age, nationality or ethnicity, socioeconomic status, highest level of educational achievement, and subject area specialization. In addition, as our PDE-FE programs engage students in a significant amount of personal reflection during their coursework, we would like to obtain permission to ask participants to voluntarily provide copies of their coursework for analysis. We would only ask for assignments that pertain to reflections on their professional identity as teachers, their motivations for teaching, and/or their philosophy of teaching, as such reflections may prove useful in understanding how ITE entrants in the Further Education sector conceptualise themselves as "teachers." Of course, students would be free to decline to provide copies of their work. Finally, if possible, we would like to include in the consent sheet an agreement that we will contact interview participants within 5-10 years of the study's completion to gather follow-up information about their career trajectory and job satisfaction in the Further Education sector.This would allow the potential for this study to look at our cohorts longitudinally, and to conduct future research into their retention within the sector. This research project's data analysis will follow a series of steps to thoroughly examine student-teachers' experiences and perspectives on further education careers. First, all enrolled PDE-FE students at MIE and NUI-Galway will be informed about the study and given a copy of the Study Information Sheet and Informed Consent Sheet so they can decide whether to participate. Interviewing all the students who volunteered for the research is the second step. They will sign the electronic consent sheet via the study information sheet's URL. The third step is to transcribe all interviews and give each participant a copy to edit. Transcription destroys audio files. The next step will be thematic analysis of all interviews using Braun and Clarke (2006). The fifth step is to thematically analyze participants' assignments and coursework. In the sixth step, descriptive statistics will be used to analyze the demographic questionnaire data. We will also compare and contrast the experiences and points of view of ITE applicants who are "traditional" and "underrepresented" in both programs. The last step will be to sum up the main points of this study by using the most common themes in the data set.

This study contributes to the conversation around the current research regarding student-teachers’ conceptualisation and construction of "teacher identity." The preliminary findings included three themes. First, students on the PDE-FE programme have undergraduate degrees in a variety of subjects or professions. This finding is congruent with the nature of the degree and has implications for how further education student-teachers engage with their study and their teaching, depending on their previous contexts. Second, students enrolled in the programme are usually mature students, and students "fresh out" of undergraduate education are rare, which could correlate with questions around the attractiveness of the FE sector for younger students and how undergraduates perceive FE. Finally, FE students identified their decision-making around the choice to engage in FE education. Most students identified altruistic reasons, including wanting to shape the next generation and wanting to support learners. These initial findings could support the improvement of policy and practice in the FE sector in Ireland, particularly as it relates to the support and development of early career teachers in the Further Education sector and in ITE programmes in Ireland. On a local level, the data may be used to improve the respective ITE programmes at each of the participating institutions so that they might be structured and improved to be more supportive of early career teachers’ needs and to better support students’ professional and identity development as teachers in the FE sector. Furthermore, this study aligns with the ECER 2023 conference theme of the value of diversity in education and educational research as it seeks to understand teacher identity and entry into the FE sector.

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